


Doesn't Hurt to Try

by Willowanderer



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Arranged Marriage, Character Study, F/M, Gen, I started thinking about it then decided to write about it, Maybe - Freeform, Poor Life Choices
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-14
Updated: 2019-03-14
Packaged: 2019-11-17 18:44:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18104243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Willowanderer/pseuds/Willowanderer
Summary: Merle wouldn't have gotten married if his family hadn't arranged it. But it could be a good deal right? And it doesn't hurt to try. Until it does.





	Doesn't Hurt to Try

It wasn’t as bad as he remembered later. But it was never good either.

 

It was a shame, an absolute shame that Merle Highchurch wasn’t married. That’s what his relatives said at least. So they took it upon themselves to set up a marriage for him. Hekuba Roughridge was a real wild child even for a beach dwarf. She’d never told anyone who Mavis’ father was, and had the child out of wedlock. Merle was a cleric of the God of Wildplaces, had his own cottage on the beach, could make a garden thrive on the beachhead scrubland and had a small business selling trinkets to tourists and doing quickie, regrettable marriages. (Merle’s option on marriage was a bit colored.)  But Merle figured, hell why  _ not  _ get married? He had cousins but nothing closer, even if they got on all right at Candlenights, sometimes it just felt damn lonely. So when the matchmaking started, he just went with it, and let everything get arranged. He didn’t even really meet his bride to be until everything was set. Hekuba was a pretty enough dwarf, stocky in the right places, her beard and hair sunstreaked gold. Probably better than he deserved. 

 

The wedding itself was one disaster after another. It had to have been some sort of divine message, but it still happened. Dwarves loved a good party, and they liked a bad party almost as much. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference. 

Merle looked over at her as they were hoisted up into the air by their relations to display the new couple and kept hold of her hand. It wouldn’t hurt to try, would it? It might not be so bad.

There was nothing romantic about food poisoning, however, so the wedding night left something to be desired. Consummation for one thing, though that did happen later. 

 

The cottage had always felt a little big just for him, so it was kind of nice to hear another voice in it, and the occasional cries from the baby. Still a baby, not yet a child. Somehow, meeting Mavis for the first time was magical in a way the wedding had not been. Looking down at her, Merle was sure she already had a higher passive perception score than he did. It was something about the way she looked at him, and considered carefully before wrapping her fingers around the one of his he offered. He wasn’t sure what to do with her, any more than he was sure about anything, but Merle made up his mind to try. How hard could it be? (Hard. The answer was hard. It was so much harder to raise a child than a garden.)

 

Holding Mookie was an experience. It was different from holding Mavis. Mookie was so small and just wouldn’t hold still, kicking his way out of the blankets even though he was less than an hour old. In the back of his head, Merle thought “ _ Who allowed this to happen?! How am I qualified to raise this kid? _ !” but his heart swelled anyway, like a wave about to take down a sandcastle. He’d do his best. Keep the kid away from over organized religion for one thing. He smiled over the squirming bundle at his wife, and she even smiled back, looking exasperated at both of them already. Of course Mookie had been pretty active when he’d been on the inside too, so maybe she was. 

 

What Merle had not been expecting was how… well…  _ respectable  _ Hekuba was. After all the warnings from their matchmaking relatives, he expected to have to shoo her out of his herbage. 

He expected lax kitchen habits. Maybe side lovers. He wouldn’t have minded any of that. 

But no, she liked the cottage, she liked the beach. She even, sometimes, seemed to like him. She took over the finances, managed them better than he ever had- frankly, he’d kept his money in a jar in the kitchen, next to the coffee. Hekuba got a bank account, suddenly there were savings?  Investments? Real estate that wasn’t under the cottage? These were reasons not to wear sandals all the time or lie in the garden until dawn smoking and counting the stars. She was fiercely respectable in a crusty beach dwarf way. The cottage developed bright colors on it’s shutters and doors. Pink and green and blue like flowers. Merle kind of liked it, even thought it was nothing he would have done. 

 

He did not care for the nagging. If she wanted to be respectable, that was her business, but he didn’t feel like changing. He liked his sandals and his flower print robes. He hadn’t really thought too much about what parts of his life would be changed by getting married. Merle changed diapers and he hated it. He tossed the children in the air and caught them, and he loved hearing their screams. Mavis made it clear after the first few times that she did not like the game, hands clenched around his wrists whenever he picked her up,  but her little brother would demand it. Mookie trailed after him on the beach as he gathered the bounty of the changing world, and tried to put everything in his mouth. 

A prayer to Pan healed the damage the sea urchin did, but not the trust Hekuba had given him  that he would keep the kid safe. Mookie was fine, so Merle didn’t see what the big deal was. Mookie had even learned something, and would give things a look over before putting them in his mouth now. 

He still put most of them in his mouth, but the kid had just gotten a handle on walking. Putting things in his mouth was part of the process.  

 

Merle didn’t want to be ‘respectable’. It was a nasty trap of letting other people decide what was right for you, as far as he was concerned. He wanted to keep doing what he was already doing, only with company.  He was fine with who he was, he’d made peace with it, enjoyed it even. Or he thought he had. It was harder to be satisfied with his choices when someone was telling him they were wrong all the time. That he should be  _ better _ . A better husband, a better father, a better person, a better cleric. 

Merle started to feel like a project, like her budding pearl farm, or the home improvements that changed the entire feel of the cottage. It made him dig his heels in. He spent more time in his garden and gathering shells and interesting driftwood on the beach. She would push, he would dig in further. One week he made sure the kids could swim; he hadn’t learned until one of his last years at Pan Camp, on a dare from a girl. With the ocean right there, he wanted to make sure the kids could stay on the top of the water. But apparently according to Hekuba they were ‘too young’ never mind that Mookie had taken to it like the spastic starfish he was. 

 

She complained he was under foot, so he took a three day trip to the cliffs to the south and cleared out a sea cave that had become a haven for poisonous snails with shells like soap bubbles. Since that apparently meant he was never home, he hunkered down to process the shells to make jewelry. Only one in ten survived, but the results were stunning.  He made nightlights out of the biggest, because they’d cast rainbow light on the walls in spiraling patterns. They were some of the best things he’d ever made. 

And somehow that turned into an argument about everything he made. 

“You could make something of yourself! You could Do something!” ‘Do something’ meant ‘do what I tell you you should do’ Merle was well into his second century, and not having that. 

“I do lots of things! I make things.”

“You can’t support a family making trinkets.  _ Terrible  _ trinkets!”

“They make me happy.”

“Well that’s  _ one  _ person.” 

“One more than you do.” he growled back. She’d scowled at him, and he left the room before she could start yelling again. As he passed the door to the kid’s room he heard it shut.

“Fuck.” Merle muttered. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t their fault either. And he guessed it wasn’t all Hekuba’s fault. He slammed the back door open, then shut again anyway. Everyone’s fault. Nobody’s fault. PanDamnit. He crashed out in the garden in a bed of sweet grass, chewing it to calm himself. It didn’t work. It wasn’t the first argument that they’d have about his handycrafts, and it wouldn’t be the last either. 

As time went on more and more of their conversations took place as shouting matches. Merle could say that he’d never yelled at his kids, but that was really the best he could say. Everything became an argument. 

 

He began smoking, not as entertainment, but just as trying to get through the day. One more thing to argue about. He tried to fight back. He tried to strike first, picking at her the same way. It wasn’t really his style. He tried to let it wash over him. Even the ever changing ocean stopped appealing the same way. Merle was tired, but felt stuck, rooted in the earth like his garden. He felt worn away like stone. He wondered if Hekuba felt the same way, rehashing the same arguments over and over again. 

 

She sounded tired when he left for the store. But she didn’t care where he went, and he didn’t care that she was tired, not really. 

 

The trading post sold the best of his stuff, coasters, painted sunsets on driftwood, little pipes made out of driftwood and shell, simple jewelry made out of hemp string and shark teeth.  It also contained the post office. Merle sorted through the mail, even though Mavis had, in her serious way, taken it as a personal chore to walk down the beach every other day to collect it. Most of it was addressed to Hekuba, so he left it. He picked up his package of the latest Pan Tracts. In the back of his mind, he remembered someone referring to them as Pan-flets, but couldn’t remember who came up with it. Always made him smile though. Merle hung around the store for a bit, poking in the back asiles, watching the chess game on the porch, buying and drinking a beer, listening to gossip. Doing anything except finishing his business and going home. At last, he couldn’t think of a damn nother thing to do, and bought rolling papers for the herbage he grew, and cigarettes of stuff he didn’t. The more he thought about walking back up the path to his door, the worse it felt. 

  
“ _ Pan, I know I haven’t always been the best guy _ .” Merle thought to himself desolately “ _ But, man, I don’t know if I can go on like this. I could use a sign _ .” He turned away from the counter, looking at his change, and saw hanging up on the announcements wall a tour for Kenny Chesney. The next date was only a few towns away. He put the money in his pocket, walked out the door and kept walking. 

**Author's Note:**

> originally the story had more after him walking out but that was just a good exit.   
> So I didn’t have to write trying-to-be-a-roadie Merle. Though I may anyway. I think I like him.   
> I have Feelings about Pan okay. Brought on by way too much knowledge religion. I know a lot more about Pan than I do dysfunctional marriages.


End file.
